The present invention relates to segmentation of brain structures in medical image data, and more particularly, to a method and system for multi-atlas segmentation of brain structures and cerebral vessel territories in brain computed tomography (CT) image data.
Brain CT imaging plays an important role in clinical disease diagnosis. In particular, detection of morphological signatures in brain CT images provides useful information for diagnosing brain disease. For example, ischaemic strokes are due to an interruption in the blood supply to a certain area of the brain, which leads to ischaemia, infarction, and eventual tissue necrosis. The changes can be interpreted and localized in brain CT images for early diagnosis. The quantitative analysis of brain CT images typically requires segmentation of brain structures and vessel territories. Reliable and accurate segmentation of vessel territories are desirable to help localize cerebrallesion in brain CT images in order to diagnose cerebral infarction. Although there have been many studies on segmentation of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, vessel territory segmentation in CT image data is far less studied. Accordingly, a reliable and accurate method for segmentation of vessel territories in brain CT image data is desirable.